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Abominable Snowman

When the nice air hostess at the front is explaining it's time to turn anything off which has a battery and an on/off switch and you think you know better, that can happen. As it happens it did on a flight that was on the tarmac at Philadelphia pre-take-off. The next time she made an announcement the chap next to me (not the previous offender) said very quietly "Yes Ma'am".

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ...

U.S. firm uses its tech in new search for missing Malaysia Airlines jet
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was heading from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, when it suddenly disappeared off the radar. Despite an extensive and costly search effort covering vast parts of the southern Indian Ocean, the aircraft and its 239 crew and passengers have yet to be found. ...

But now, following months of negotiations, U.S. seabed exploration firm Ocean Infinity is offering some hope. The company has signed a contract with the Malaysian government that will allow it to use its powerful search technology to explore another part of the ocean on a “no find, no fee” basis.

Ocean Infinity’s vessel, Seabed Constructor, is already on its way to the search area in the southern Indian Ocean, with the deep-sea exploration scheduled to begin on January 17.

The Texas-based company will receive as much as $70 million if it finds the aircraft, the Malaysian government confirmed this week, and it has just 90 days in which to do so. ...

Ocean Infinity will focus on a region of around 10,000 square miles identified as an area of interest by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau believes there is a “high probability” that the plane is located somewhere in that zone. ...

Seabed Constructor has 65 crew on board and is carrying eight autonomous underwater vehicles that can search in greater detail (with HD cameras and an array of sensors), as well as four times faster, than earlier efforts. Six unmanned surface vessels work with the underwater vehicles for precise positioning and communications, Ocean Infinity says on its website.

It’s the first time the company has taken on such a project, but its experience using deep-sea technology for seabed mapping and imaging, marine geological surveys, and environmental monitoring stands it in good stead. ...

Peter McMahon, a 64-year-old Australian mechanical engineer, claimed that Google Earth images purportedly showed the missing plane in the water 10 miles south of the island of Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean.

The engineer reportedly said officials with the Australian Transport and Safety Bureau (ATSB) told him the images — which appear to show a basic outline of a plane — could show the aircraft, which vanished on March 8, 2014. However, officials speaking to Fox News denied they told him that.

A spokesperson for the Joint Agency Coordination Center (JACC) told Fox News in a statement that McMahon reached out to the agency via Facebook and email in 2016 and 2017, but at no time "did the ATSB suggest [McMahon's] evidence could be missing flight MH370."

The Google Earth images McMahon sent to the Australian agency were from Nov. 6, 2009 — more than four years before the airplane disappeared, officials added.

McMahon, according to The Sun, also claimed officials didn't want the plane to be found because "it's full of bullet holes" — a subject which he did not further elaborate.

CyberPunk

Two shipwrecks found during a failed search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 were merchant vessels that sank in the 19th Century, researchers say.

The ships, discovered 2,300km (1,400 miles) off Western Australia, have been narrowed down by experts to a handful of coal-carrying British vessels.

Searchers stumbled on the wrecks during a trawl of the Indian Ocean in 2015.

Australian maritime researchers used sonar pictures and shipping records in their efforts to identify the vessels.

The location of MH370 remains unknown more than four years after it disappeared, carrying 239 people, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Dr Ross Anderson, curator of maritime archaeology from the Western Australian Museum, said it was likely to be one of three vessels: the West Ridge (lost in 1883), Kooringa (1894) or Lake Ontario (1897).

The West Ridge, which vanished along with its 28 crew on a trip from England to India, appeared to be the closest match, he said.

Dr Anderson said the vessel weighed between 1,000 and 1,500 tonnes and was found relatively intact and upright on the sea bed, about 4km below water level.

Aviation experts think they know what happened to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared shortly after takeoff on its way to Beijing in March 2014, according to a report from "60 Minutes Australia."

More than four years after the airplane disappeared with 227 passengers and 12 crewmembers on board, an investigation by a panel of experts brought together by the news show has concluded that the disappearance was in all likelihood the result of a deliberate act by the pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

The report, conducted by an independent team of aviation experts and presented on the news show with much drama, has no official weight. But it does lend credence to speculation dating back to at least 2016, when it became clear that Shah had deliberately plotted the plane's unexpected course.

According to CBS News, one expert on the panel used military radar data to precisely reconstruct the plane's path. He found that the aircraft skirted along the edges of the Malaysia-Thailand borders — an effective tactic for deliberately avoiding radar detection. He also found that the Boeing 777 "likely" dipped its wing over Shah's hometown of Penang in northwest Malaysia, which the panel suggested might have been for a look out the window.

"He was killing himself; unfortunately, he was killing everybody else on board, and he did it deliberately," Canadian air crash investigator Larry Vance, a member of the unofficial panel, told "60 Minutes Australia."

The panel also concluded, based on physical evidence recovered by official investigators, that the airplane did not strike the water in a sharp dive as earlier reports suggested but was likely controlled until the end, crashing far from shore and outside the earlier search area.

Again, it's important to recognize that this panel's conclusions do not bear any official weight and that those conclusions are inferences, not actual knowledge of Shah's intentions. Shah's family reportedly disputes the panel's conclusion, citing the need for direct evidence upon recovery of the plane.

Emperor of Antarctica

I hope someone is keeping track of the number of times this mystery has been "solved" by blaming the captain. I followed the story for months because it was fascinating and I was off work much of that time. Haven't seen any evidence that made the captain look (to me) like any more of a suspect than anyone else. My guess is it was a freak accident that caused cascading system failures at just the wrong time. Who knows? We'll probably never find out what really happened.

Abominable Snowman

I hope someone is keeping track of the number of times this mystery has been "solved" by blaming the captain. I followed the story for months because it was fascinating and I was off work much of that time. Haven't seen any evidence that made the captain look (to me) like any more of a suspect than anyone else. My guess is it was a freak accident that caused cascading system failures at just the wrong time. Who knows? We'll probably never find out what really happened.

Indeed, we might not. However, as a Boeing retiree, I'd like to point out that the manufacturer of the aircraft (in this case, Boeing) is rarely found to be the main cause of aircraft disasters. It does happen, of course, but the vast majority of such occurrences are found to be pilot error.

Full disclosure: my brother is a former airline pilot, so I can see both sides of the picture. Also, I was a mere worker bee, not one of the bosses.

Emperor of Antarctica

Apparently if you put together a panel of "experts" for a TV show, a conclusion of "We don't have sufficient information to make an intelligent guess as to what actually happened" is not an option. Who knew?

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ...

Update ... The latest ocean floor search campaign has ended, and no additional searches are planned until there's credible evidence pointing to a specific location.

Last Scheduled Search for Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Ends
Australia said it held out hope Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would one day be found as the last search of the seabed in the remote Indian Ocean where it was believed to have been lost was scheduled to end on Tuesday.

Malaysia said last week the search by Texas-based company Ocean Infinity would end on Tuesday after two extensions of the original 90-day time limit.

Australian Transport Minister Michael McCormack said the four-year search had been the largest in aviation history and tested the limits of technology and the capacity of experts and people at sea. ...

Malaysia signed a “no cure, no fee” deal with Ocean Infinity in January to resume the hunt for the plane, a year after the official search in the southern Indian Ocean by Australia, Malaysia and China was called off. No other search is scheduled.

Australia, Malaysia and China agreed in 2016 that an official search would only resume if the three countries had credible evidence that identified a specific location for the wreckage.

Malaysia said last week an Ocean Infinity ship Seabed Contractor operating underwater sonar drones had searched more than 96,000 square kilometers (37,000 square miles) of sea. The search area deemed by experts to be the most likely crash site was only 25,000 square kilometers (9,650 square miles), roughly the size of Vermont. ...

I must say if we could find a way to continue funding (global Internet crowdfunding perhaps ?) Ocean Infinitys trip in the southern oceans who knows what sort of stuff might come to light. I was fascinated to read it had discovered 2 possible 19C wrecks which have been confirmed as coal transport ships with the cargo almost certainly from these shores (UK) plus more recent (20C) sunken Aussie trawlers. I wonder if anyone on board is filming the story ?

Justified & Ancient

Enquiry fails to come to any conclusion, but adds to the mystery. The aircraft appears to have been manually turned around mid-air, rather than coasting on auto-pilot and evidence "points irresistibly" to "unlawful interference by a third party". (but why then has no terrorist group claimed responsibility?).

Also seems odd that ATC in both Malaysia and Vietnam broke standard protocols, resulting in the flight being missing for 20 minutes before being reported .

Finally, the failure of all four emergency locator transmitters seems very strange.

I definitely agree that there are a number of suspicious findings, but this isn't one.

International standards--like any rule in South East Asia--may well be liable to violation when a situation looks really bad and somebody in the office might have buggered something up, and it's going to look really embarrassing for all of them if they have--so s.o.p. is to stall and hope it's all right after all.

King-Sized Canary

Very fine letter in FT 371 summing up why this case is so confounding, though the idea the Russians were behind the disappearance and the plane is now in Kazakhstan is a bit hard to believe. Mind you, reading the other points, it's as good an explanation as any, because there are no good explanations.

Public Service is my Motto.

Very fine letter in FT 371 summing up why this case is so confounding, though the idea the Russians were behind the disappearance and the plane is now in Kazakhstan is a bit hard to believe. Mind you, reading the other points, it's as good an explanation as any, because there are no good explanations.

So, you don't think the wreckage that washed up in the Indian Ocean that has been positively identified as from MH370 from serial numbers constitutes better evidence of its fate GNC? I am no fan of the Russians, and I accept the notion that they destroyed MH17, but I don't think they were involved in the disappearance of MH370. The evidence just doesn't point that way. That is not to suggest that a false trail isn't possible, but I don't credit the Russian military or intelligence services to be capable of an operation of such skill and subtlety.

Never give up, never surrender

The documentary I saw came down in favour of pilot suicide. I can't remember the exact detail, but one of the communication devices that was shut off (to do with the engines?) would have been very difficult for anyone but the pilots to do - much more knowledge would have been needed than that possessed by say the 9/11 terrorist pilots.

There has been at least one other case - apart from Germanwings -of a commercial airliner pilot suiciding and taking all the passengers and crew with him

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ...

... I am no fan of the Russians, and I accept the notion that they destroyed MH17, but I don't think they were involved in the disappearance of MH370. The evidence just doesn't point that way. That is not to suggest that a false trail isn't possible, but I don't credit the Russian military or intelligence services to be capable of an operation of such skill and subtlety.

I don't think spoofing the flight path data inferred from the satcom handshakes is feasible at all.

The onboard communication system involved was automatic. The signal characteristics analyzed pertained to the signal itself, not its data content.

A potential northward routing remained in play (though statistically improbable) during the first phase of the satcom signal analyses. The later, second phase (using Doppler attributes and the satellite's own drift pattern) effectively ruled out any northward path entirely.

Drift analyses performed on the locations of the positively-identified MH370 debris unequivocally supported the southward tracking concluded from the signal analyses.

King-Sized Canary

So, you don't think the wreckage that washed up in the Indian Ocean that has been positively identified as from MH370 from serial numbers constitutes better evidence of its fate GNC? I am no fan of the Russians, and I accept the notion that they destroyed MH17, but I don't think they were involved in the disappearance of MH370. The evidence just doesn't point that way. That is not to suggest that a false trail isn't possible, but I don't credit the Russian military or intelligence services to be capable of an operation of such skill and subtlety.

Yes, the Earhart case is still the subject of speculations rather than hard proof. Some speculations are more plausible than others, and the thread dedicated to that classic mystery keeps rumbling on ...